By Karen Duvall
Description often gets overlooked for the power it can have in a story. Some dismiss it as no big deal, just use the five senses and you’re good to go. Some avoid using it altogether because they think readers skip that part to get to the action. Some worry over excessive exposition that could be perceived as an info dump. And some apply it strictly as a means for building their story world, period.
The above assumptions are mostly false.
Effective description is one of the most powerful tools in a writer’s toolbox. There’s a skill to making it work in an active way that enhances both plot and character, and can make the difference between an okay story and a compelling one.
I could spend an entire day teaching a workshop on description, but I’ll condense the basics for the purpose of this blog. In fact, I’m going to start at the beginning. Of a book. Like, page 1.
An overall issue I see with a lot of first books is an eagerness to reveal the setting in a cinematic way. A literary camera pans across a vista in the land where the story takes place. Or the camera slowly zooms in on some metaphorical image that sets the tone of the story about to unfold. Or perhaps the lens is pointed out the window as thick clouds of fog roll across the screen to create atmosphere.
The above might work great for a movie, with a voice over done by the main character. And though screenplays share a number of similarities with the novel form, they are different medias. Film engages the viewer visually and captures attention that way. Books use words, and call upon a reader’s imagination to conjure the image that’s intended to be seen. This takes time, and readers are less likely to have the patience to translate all those words into something visually engaging enough to compel them to turn the page. A writer needs to hook them before they decide to go watch a movie instead.
But you want to set the tone, the atmosphere, and visually engage your readers, so how else can you do this? If you want to use description to open your book, your job is to create context. Associate the description with the action and the characters. Don’t separate the two. Engage your reading audience by creating a balance that ties all these elements together.
Let’s use the vista as an example. As your words paint a panoramic view of the story world, they need to include an active element in the story. You’ll be in a character’s point of view as you do this (please avoid omniscient if possible) so his emotions are attached to this unfolding landscape. Maybe it’s morning and the character is tense because of something about to happen. What he sees and feels relate to this scenery in some way. Maybe his job is to slaughter a farm animal to feed his family and he’s loath to take a life. Or he has to check the zombie traps that were set the night before and he’s scared of what he’ll find. Consider having some conflict at play here because readers will be most engaged by tension rather than entering the land of the happy people. Even if your characters are happy, there needs to be a hint of unpleasantness just around the corner. Tension on every page.
Just remember that context is key, especially for genre fiction. And even though you think you’re showing rather than telling, a description that lacks engagement with the plot and characters is like a barren island floating in a sea of nothing. Dry. Boring. Stagnant. It doesn’t take the reader where he or she needs to go.
Does the first page of your manuscript open with description or action?
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Karen Duvall is an award-winning author with 5 published novels and 2 novellas. Harlequin Luna published her Knight’s Curse series in 2011 and 2012, and her post apocalyptic novella, Sun Storm, was released in Luna’s ‘Til The World Ends anthology in January 2013.
Karen lives in the Pacific Northwest with her husband and four incredibly spoiled pets. Writing under the pen name Cory Dale, she released the first book in a new urban fantasy series, Demon Fare, in December 2014.
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